1979: The Hillside Strangler Was Two Men: Kenneth Bianchi Named His Own Cousin to Save Himself
Kenneth Bianchi confessed to being the Hillside Strangler, but he did not go down alone. To save himself, he named his older cousin, Angelo Buono, as his accomplice, and on this day in 1979 Buono was arrested in Los Angeles.
The betrayal inverted everything investigators assumed about the case. It was Buono, not Bianchi, who turned out to be the predatory sexual sadist and driving force behind their partnership, having first drawn his younger cousin into crime years earlier by suggesting they go into business together as pimps. That shared criminal history curdled into a killing spree, and when the pressure of capture came, it was Bianchi who broke family loyalty to shift the blame onto the man who had led him there.
